Pesticides Restricted to Benefit Bee Population

The federal government is now limiting the use of a pesticide that it is contributing to colony collapse disorder.

The Environmental Protection Agency recently issued a statute forcing agriculture chemical companies to add a warning label on the packages of a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids, and it has additionally prohibited the use of the pescticides on crops where bees are pollinating nearby. Earlier this year, a federal investigation revealed that agriculture chemicals were partly responsible for the widespread colony collapse disorder, and the European Commission recently banned their use altogether. While environmental activists see this as progress, some note that more needs to be done. Lisa Archer, food program director of the organization Friends of the Earth, notes that the ban is “far short of what is needed to protect bees and other pollinators from pesticides that a growing body of evidence show are harming and killing them."